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LETTER 



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AN AGED AND A EETIEED CITIZEN OF BOSTON 



MEMBER OF THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF 
MASSACHUSETTS, 



COERCIVE MEASURES 



AID OF TEMPERANCE 



BOSTON: 

1848. 
EASTBURN'S PRESS 






IN S2CKAM I 



LETTER 



TO WILLIAM HAYDEN, ESQ., \ 

Member of the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. ) 

Boston, April 8th, 1848. 
Dear Sir: 

You are no stranger to the fact, that I have 
long regarded with deep interest the temperance 
movement in this State. I admit that it has occa- 
sioned the most salutary reform in the moral habits 
of society that the world has ever witnessed ; and I 
have contributed to its progress by all the means in 
my power, so long as it was confined to its legitimate 
object. This, in fact, ought to be considered simply 
as a "-call to the unconverted" in view of fixing the 
attention of the individual upon the unsuspected 
dangers of his own habits, and of displaying the in- 
sidious and ruinous temptations to which he is ex- 
posed, by precept and example. But I am nearly 
discouraged, in perceiving that the leaders of this re- 
form — yielding to the propensity of all reformers, ex- 
cept his who "left an example that we should follow 
his steps " — have adopted a system of coercion instead 
of persuasion, and attempt to compel the consciences 
of men by stretching the laws beyond the stringency 
of the old blue laws of our forefathers. This I la- 
ment, not merely because it is wrong in itself, but 
because it inevitably leads to a reaction that will 
leave matters worse than they were before the tern- 



perance flag was unfurled. Laws which stigmatize 
lawful or innocent actions with the brand of crime, 
which multiply penalties, which require for their en- 
forcement the base auxiliaries of spies and informers, 
which encourage confederates for the sake of procur- 
ing witnesses, which lumber the tables of grand ju- 
ries with indictments ; which, in a word, are against 
the grain of great masses of the people — are prover- 
bially curses instead of blessings, and will not be en- 
dured by a free people. Of this description were the 
laws of France, prohibiting the citizens from eating 
and drinking when and where they pleased. These 
have subverted the throne, and shaken the founda- 
tions of the State. The consequences here may not 
be quite as serious, but the cases are analogous. 
They will provoke the same feelings and the same 
resistance, in kind though not in degree. The ex- 
treme right will be supplanted by the extreme left : 
the tee-totalers by the wine-bibbers ; the saints by the 
publicans and sinners ; and all restraints upon the 
traffic in spirituous liquors will be swept away. 
Men will not, in this age, submit to be scolded, re- 
viled, or whipped into the observance of sumptuary 
laws. They will sooner break their chains than pei> 
mit others to break their glasses. The " padlock " 
of the reformers should be placed on the " mind " of 
the purchaser, and not upon the door of the vendor. 
This is manifest to all who open their eyes to the 
signs of the times. In the State of New York, the 
fever of reform, caught here, prevailed in all quarters, 
and legislation was busy in preventing licensed hou- 
ses. But the last year, the Legislature, after great 
deliberation and satisfactory experience of the mis- 
take of their predecessors, repealed their act. In 
Vermont, it is stated that the people, by an immense 



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majority of three thousand, declared against the li- 
cense system. This year, that majority is said to be 
reduced to one third. In our State, it is not to be 
doubted that opposition to the system has increased 
and is increasing. Many are restrained from open 
demonstration of hostility, by reluctance to be classed 
with the intemperate — many by hypocrisy — many 
by a nervous temperament, the fear of calumny and 
of hard names. Meanwhile, a strong sympathy is 
created with those who, having been bred to a vo- 
cation which the laws allowed, and embarked their 
capital in it, are threatened with deprivation of their 
means of subsistence, and denounced as bad members 
of society. All these are brooding over their discon- 
tent, and preparing, some of them unconsciously, to 
combine with any party, in putting down those who 
deny them the exercise of the most natural of rights 
— of appeasing thirst by the choice of their own po- 
tations — and who, by forcing all to drink water, 
would prevent many from gaining their bread. 

It is the undisguised object of the prominent re- 
formers, to procure the enactment of such new laws, 
or to countenance such construction of the old laws, 
as will, in effect, amount to a total prohibition of the 
sale of spirituous liquors, and of consequence to pre- 
vent their consumption — at least, to confine it to a 
privileged aristocracy of those who can afford to buy 
and "drink a hogshead out." This object is, in other 
words, to regulate the diet of the people, by investing a 
majority with the power to control the economy of 
private families, through the aid of the legislative or 
municipal authorities, or a concurrence of both. A 
claim so extravagant, oppressive, and in fact absurd, 
cannot have been viewed in its true light by many 
worthy persons whose zeal is the cause of, and may 



be the excuse for, overlooking first principles, and 
unwarily adopting the doctrine that the end justifies 
the means. If, prior to the reform movement, the 
question had been propounded to these worthy per- 
sons — Does it consist with the nature of the social 
compact that one portion of the community should pre- 
scribe to another what they shall eat or what they 
shall drink, either by legislative acts, indignation 
meetings, brow-beating, maledictions, or otherwise? 
they would have laughed the notion to scorn. But 
there is no monster of " mien so hideous," that will 
not appear an angel of light, when robed like the 
"veiled prophet." The maxim that the majority 
must govern, is the veil thrown over this monstrous 
claim — a maxim of universal application to the polit- 
ical relations of a free people, but of very limited ap- 
plication to their social condition. Certainly, it can- 
not with justice be made to bear upon the actions of 
families or individuals, except so far as they are crim- 
inal in themselves, or affect directly the public health, 
peace, or morals. To transgress this limit, is to go 
to sea without chart or compass. No principle can be 
suggested, which discriminates the right to control a 
man's potations, and not his food. For the above 
objects of public policy — and for none other — the 
sale of spirituous liquors may be limited to particu- 
lar locations, and confined to men of approved char- 
acter ; so may the sale of beef and mutton. Grog 
shops are not more lawfully under the control of leg- 
islation than shambles. Both may be regulated, with 
a lonafide view to the prevention of nuisances. Nei- 
ther can be rightfully prohibited ; and laws which, 
under the pretext of regulation, aim at total suppres- 
sion, are legislative evasions ; in homely phrase, 
"Yankee tricks," "whipping the devil round the 



stump," and quite below the dignity of our political 
fathers. 

Another view of the subject. The best definition of 
liberty perhaps is, the faculty of doing what the laws 
permit ; and the most wretched condition of slavery is 
proverbially that in which the laws are uncertain or un- 
known. They are both, when made to conflict with each 
other. The laws of the United States admit the impor- 
tation of spirituous liquors, and raise revenue from it. 
This inevitably involves the right to sell the imported 
article, in virtue of the supreme law of the land ; sub- 
ject only to laws of the States made for regulation of 
their domestic police. This power to regulate is par- 
tial, and must be consistent with the paramount gen- 
eral power to import and sell. It is an exception 
which should be so construed as to stand with the 
rule. But to convert the exception into the rule, is 
to bring the law of the State into conflict with the 
supreme laws of the Union. Thus, while these su- 
preme laws permit a particular traffic, and the United 
States participate in its profits by filling their treas- 
ury, the laws of an inferior jurisdiction, according to 
modern construction, condemn the traffic, and doom 
its agents to fine and imprisonment. This construc- 
tion of the State law by the municipal authorities — 
reposing upon legislative countenance — whereby they 
assume to withhold all licenses, and thus substantial- 
ly interdict all sales and all consumption, at their 
discretion, is a huge pretension, at variance with the 
uniform procedure of our ancestors, ever since the 
first settlement of the country. It is not less repug- 
nant to the principles of a free government, whose laws 
should be equally applicable to all the citizens, irre- 
spective of their habitancy. But as the license laws 
are administered — with the countenance of the Leg- 



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islature — the citizens of one town are subject to 
one law, and the citizens of an adjacent town to an- 
other. In one they may sell with impunity — in the 
other they may be sent to the House of Correction. 
All are liable to annual vicissitude and changes of 
position, from the grog shop to the prison and back 
again, at the will or whim of a bare majority of alder- 
men or commissioners which may chance to be of the 
teetotal or free trade school, or one of whom may 
happen to be absent when the question, " to drink or 
not to drink," is taken, after argument by counsel 
learned in the law. Thus it may happen that the 
unlicensed seller in Boston may be this year doomed 
to the House of Correction, and before his term of 
confinement expires, forty others may be pursuing 
the same trade under licenses from another board of 
aldermen. Again, the Supreme Court, sitting in 
Middlesex, may confirm a judgment rendered in Suf- 
folk against a seller of wine, and while he is suffer- 
ing in prison, may order their own wine from a li- 
censed retailer, without any violation of law or deco- 
rum. Thus, the character of crime is to depend on 
the demarcation of town lines. These incongruities 
ought to suffice to demonstrate this arrogation of 
power to be a flagrant usurpation. If the Legisla- 
ture cannot, by its own act, stop all sales, much less 
can it invest the municipal government with any such 
powers. The right to interdict a trade, if it existed 
in the Legislature, must be a unit, and unalienable. 
All that can be delegated is, not the poiver itself, but 
the authority to execute the statute. The law T decides 
that licenses may be granted by subordinate authori- 
ties. All laws are intended to have effect; but this 
object is frustrated, when those who are entrusted 
with their execution refuse to act. They, in such 



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cases, become legislators and repealers. They resolve 
that licenses may not be granted ; and, when such re- 
fusal becomes universal, which it is the object of 
some legislators to make it, the law itself becomes a 
dead-letter on the statute book. The true and 
manly course, for the advocates of these anomalies, 
would be to move, in plain terms, for a prohibition to 
drink wine or spirits, and to enforce penalties against 
the drinkers, who are the parties at fault. There is 
certainly nothing wrong, in itself, in the sale of spir- 
its. The mere sale of a bottle of wine is not, intrin- 
sically, worse than the sale of a Bible. There is noth- 
ing good or bad in either act. The whole fault consists 
in the drinking. If this is wrong in a citizen of Mas- 
sachusetts, it must be equally so in those who come 
within our jurisdiction from other States and coun- 
tries. It would be fair, however, to warn these 
against coming hither to banquets or other symposia. 
They might otherwise be misled ; as, in the public pa- 
pers, a few months since, Judge Story's wine was ad- 
vertised for sale, as having been especially imported 
for the use of the Judges of the Supreme Court 
of the United States ; and, in the same papers^ was 
to be seen a notice of the lectures of Mr. Gough, 
the reformed drunkard. 

It seems that a bill has lately been reported to the 
House of Representatives, imposing prohibitions upon 
the sale of spirituous liquors, but excepting from its 
penalties sales for sacramental purposes. This pre- 
sents an effort to blend and reconcile a divine injunc- 
tion with a secular prohibition, that would seem to 
be of a revolting and irreverent character to those 
who do not justly appreciate the good intentions of 
its movers. It conclusively implies that our blessed 
Saviour, in his last mournful and heart-breaking in- 



10 



terview with his disciples, consecrated, by his exam* 
pie and command, a libation proper to be used al- 
ways in celebration of his memory, but deserving to 
be eschewed on other occasions, as a curse and poison 
to mankind. And can it be imagined that, when, in 
connection with this sublime solemnity, he declares, 
" I will not drink henceforth of this fruit of the vine, 
until that day when I drink it new with you in my 
Fathers kingdom," he would have chosen to allego* 
rize his celestial occupation, by an allusion to a wordly 
malpractice 1 That persons with this impression can 
feel themselves edified by a participation of the conse- 
crated elements, is quite beyond my comprehension. 
The Saviour was entirely familiar with the numerous 
instances in which excessive indulgence in strong 
drinks is held up as an abomination in the Old Tes- 
tament from the days of Noah, and certainly could 
have regarded it in no better light. But the first 
miracle, and other facts in his history, demonstrate 
that he did not hold the abuse of any of the gifts 
of Providence by some, as conclusive against their 
moderate use by others. He well knew our human 
proclivity to the abuse of all the appetites and pas- 
sions. But his instruments of reform were sermons 
and parables, and example. And his servant, Saint 
Paul, in conformity, says to the Colossians, " Let no 
man judge you in meat or in drink." 

In a word, my dear sir, I must believe that the 
sooner we revert to the old usages of the Bay State, 
the happier it will be for all. It is devoutly to be 
wished that our Legislature, reposing upon its known 
abhorrence of the vice of intemperance, and its mani- 
fold protestations against it, may pause in their at- 
tempt to reach by legislation what is unattainable, 
and which will only develope the worst feature of a 



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Ibad government — ill humor among the people at 
large. Let them leave the rest to the teachings of 
example, to the temperance societies, and to Father 
Matthew. This worthy person may be expected to 
display, in more graphic colors than Hogarth, the 
contrast between " beer street and gin lane," and the 
advantages of " water street " over both ; and all good 
members of society will second his efforts. 

I venture to make these suggestions to you, and to 
place them at your disposal. With an experience in 
the legislation of Massachusetts, equal, I believe, to 
that of any living person, I have an abiding convic- 
tion that I have never witnessed any attempt to leg- 
islate, so adverse to the rights of man, as some which 
are made in our General Court, respecting the sub- 
ject of temperance. They are a prelude to a system 
of sumptuary laws, which, if not resisted, will become 
a substitute for family government. Somebody ought 
to speak out, in opposition to this course. Some- 
body, who has no personal interest, and no friend 
or connexion interested in the result — who drinks 
but little, who was never in the habit of drinking 
much, and who has no occasion to recur to a vendor 
of spirituous liquors to replenish his stock. I do not 
add my name, not presuming that it can have much 
influence with the generation that has grown up 
since I have become dead to the busy world ; but, if 
any of your friends have the curiosity to know 
whether the writer comes fairly within the above 
category, you are at liberty to mention it. 

I am very faithfully and respectfully, 

Your old friend, 
ANTIQUAEY. 
Boston, April 7, 1848. 



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